The boost skill was pretty worthless. The Skeleton Key never broke, so all you had to do was spam the Auto-Attempt button and eventually you'll get in (or keep attempting a manual pick, if you're feeling masochistic). The skill boost at least made it so Auto-Attempt worked faster and manual picking was easier, but really, what was the point? With the skeleton key in hand, the game could've just disabled all locks because you'd never be in a position of being unable to unlock something.

Whoa, hold on there. Bagging Morrowind? Bad form. very bad...

Another question is why can't we bash open doors and containers? It could be reliant on our strength or such but it should be an option. Why some character has to be skilled in lockpicking just to get into every chest. Stupid. Just make some that are extra tough so only the lock pickers can get into those, but leave some able to be opened by the massive, neck-as-thick-as-head, six foot six guy with an ebony battle-axe. Other rpgs you can bash open containers.

Because when I cut wood in real life there isn't some bar at the top of my line of vision that I have to time up with my axe strikes. Minigames add no depth whatsoever, if anything they take it away. Mundane tasks are mundane.

It seems to vary. Many people don't like them on principle because they weren't in older games. Some people don't like them because they allow for player skill, and thus eliminate the requirement that gamers be in the "statistics and computer science double PHD buddy club."

I just think they weren't well implemented, but that they were a well-intentioned attempt in the early days of trying to balance player skill with character skill.

The main problem is that they are considered and implemented as "games". They should be "tasks" that immerse you in the world more. Some people think that rpgs have to be about the numbers and stats one reason they may not like minigames or player involvement. But I think rpgs should be immersive and detailed. Player involvement is more important. that is "Role-playing" after all. (sorry for all the quotations...)

Here' s an idea: How about the option to turn off the minigames. When off, you rely of a RNG system. When on, well, that's obvious.

Real life cook: very busy, often preparing several dishes at once, no time to sit around and talk, messes up too many times and gets fired.

Video game cooking minigame: take it slow, time your hits correctly, one at a time, make lots of friends, and walk away with 37,846 gold.

To this day, I still don't get the lock-picking mini game in Oblivion. Isn't it just hit and miss until you get the old skelly key?

I hated that in Fallout 3 and NV


besides, Security and Sneak are getting merged.

Sound cues.

I had something, then I lost whatever I was going to say. I'll just put out that despite the earnest claims of the 'true fandom," no developer goes out to make something unenjoyable. If they do, it's just because they failed to make something that they thought would be more fun than the alternatives. That means that if they can make minigames that are implemented well, then they would be fine for anyone outside the Buddy Club.

They're not all that new. Return to Krondor (1998) had a lock picking mini-game. Might and Magic VII (1999) had a card-game. Arcomage, the card game, was really fun and made it feel as though your character was spending an evening in a tavern. I think it's much harder to design a mini-game that mimics a character skill than one that is intended purely as a diversion.

No... That would imply absolute perfect skill ~that a living creature cannot achieve, and that a machine must have precise conditions for.

I thought it was absurd that one could not attempt to open a lock without the requisite skill; as folks try this all the time. Its a fact that you can open a combination padlock by just spinning the dial randomly if you have the time. Its not meant to keep you out, its meant to discourage entry.

Any lock you have access to should be attempt-able, and the advent of actually opening it should rest on the PC's skill with locks, vs the complexity of the lock. This would mean that a master locksmith would be reliably able to open most locks in a reasonable amount of time, while a novice would rarely ever open a lock on the first try ~but still could have it happen (just as in Real Life :shrug:).

I thought lockpicking in Oblivion was OK, and actually improved to good in FO. I'd like to see these better tied into PC skill, though, so that if you have a 50 security skill, it's nearly impossible to open a 75 lock. IIRC the mechanic is already there, but they need to turn the knob way up.

But most mini-games just don't make sense, and completely ruin the flow of the game. Mini-games for speech, for example, are a really bad idea. Even if they made one that was fun and made sense (which I doubt they could pull off), it would be really intrusive to pop-up a new menu when you try to charm or coerce someone.

That would be great as I really do not like the mini-games at all , but as long as I can opt out somehow or even automate it so I don't even get a mini-game screen that would be fantastic.

Sounds like a perfect description of Oblivion's lockpicking minigame.

I can easily see character level and player ability go hand to hand. You can make minigames be more forgiving if your character skill and level are high for that particual minigames, but at least allow you to try at any level.

Basing it all on your character skill/level just doesn't seem right to me. Especially if you can't lock a pick becuase your haven't leveled up. In real life, I can try to pick any lock, but my know how and skills will dictate if it will take me a second to unlock it or months.

That's what Oblivion did, and resulted in a character with a security skill of 5 being able to consistently open Very Hard locks if the player was good enough. That's just not really acceptable. There should be a point where the game goes "okay, your skill is too low, you won't be able to do this without getting better." You aren't going to be taking down tough enemies with a short sword when your blade skill is 5, so why are you able to open hard locks when your security skill is 5?

Not saying the minigame has to go away, but your character's ability to open locks needs to be limited by his relavent skills. Engage the player with the character's attempt to lock pick, by all means, but if your character isn't good enough to do it, it shouldn't matter how good the player is.

the mini games are ok could be improved through

The forum logged me out while in mid-post, so it cut off my post, resulting in a double post, so I came in and edited this to explain what happened. Thanks!

If they are immersive, well-portrayed, useful, and fun, then I don't object. In the Call of Duty franchise, one minigame is setting charges to blow up some door or some computer or something. You usually have to set the charges while everyone else is engaged in machine-gun fire all around you. If you don't hurry, they die. The minigame shows you from first person hand-placing the explose, clicking a few buttons, inserting a key, turning it, or some such thing, and then the timer is set and you run for the hills with your head down. A few moments later the thing you were exploding goes off. That mini-game is perfectly executed, and I don't mind doing it every time because it adds to the immersion of the scene and is a bit stressful, which makes it all more fun.

If they thought like that, mini-games in TES games would be more intelligent and useful and fun. Currently, they are not very good.

I like the new Wood Chopping minigame ... it appears to be at least immersive and is a way to make some extra money at lower levels (or at least it should be) ... When chopping wood, you have to aim at the center of the piece of wood. In this game, the same thing should be true. There should be a split second shown from first person perspective where you drag your axe-line to where you want it to strike... but you only have a fraction of a moment. If you center it, you score perfectly chopped halves, otherwise you mangle the piece and have to toss it into a junkwood pile with lower value to your chopping efforts. That's the way I see this minigame, if indeed that's what it is to be.

I have some ideas for addtional minigames:

1. Bar Fights as Minigames. Set the death condition to be only "knocked out" instead. Then initate a "multi-duel" under the new duel system. Players can only use chairs, glasses, and mugs to do combat in the bar. There is damage reduction based on your Constitution so people with a tougher skin don't take as much damage as wimps. If you make it until the city guards arrive to throw you out, then everyone else pays the fines and you get off scott free. But if you get "knocked out" then you have to pay SOME OF the bar bill and damages, spread out across the other losers. There should be significant rewards for this, like greater likability or score within your faction, for walking away from bar fights unscathed. So you have to do them for some reason once in a while.

2. Potion Brewing ... It should be done from a Top-Down perspective over the goblets, urns, pots, and beakers with pre-rendered video behind the user's Potion Brewing interface, which is slightly ghosted and see through. When you select your herb, powder, or liquid combinations and verify you have a potion that is useful, you hit "create potion" and then you should see your character's hand dumping in some of those ingredients into the pot where you see the pot churning and steaming, or smoking, or changing colors ... some reaction. When finished, you should see the pot raised up by chains and then dumped over and down into some glass apparatusi such as those calcinators and alembics (or whatever they're called) and the other glass distilling portions, where the fluid pours down into flasks or vials with wax or cork stoppers. This part could be via some pre-rendered short animation sequences, not in game. So that A) you could turn them off if you wanted and B) so they wouldn't have to program the advanced fluid dynamics into the game for only a minigame. Having been returned to the real game screen again, you can then pick up the flasks, having completed your Potion Brewing. That would be quite some experience if done with the proper amount of beauty, asthetics, and style. There would need to be an animation for every color, with varied explosions, fireworks, sparks, shimmerings, and other things (or perhaps those things could be green-screen keyed in realtime over the animation to save on the pre-rendered stuff, otherwise it could get a little Disc-space hungry, and I wouldn't want that at all.) Again, we're only talking about 30-45 seconds of animation, but possibly 16-20 variations to account for all the kinds of spells groups you can craft potions from.

3. Staff Head Creation .... Every staff could have a center-top portion devoted to crystal arrays. The crystal arrays can be embedded in the top and other wooden shapes could be screwed on over the top of them if you didn't want to see the crystal patterns or let your enemies see them. The crystal arrays could be fit and arranged with shapes with different colored crystals creating unique patterns that all have varied and useful affects and whose purpose is to modify YOUR abilities in one spell school and perhaps even toward one specific type of spell (like fire or electricity, or sleep) ... to create new effects or to double the power of certain effects. The top of the portion would be diamond-shaped and within that outer diamond shape would be a ton of smaller little pixel-like empty slots. Looking down on the diamone shape, you select crystals and place them in the pixel-like slots to form your unique picture. You craft the head into whatever patterns you like and then see how that pattern effects your magic as you wield the staff in combat. The game anolyizes the pattern and assigns different characteristics to it. Your Master studies the pattern also to tell you the quality and effects of your crystal arrangement, so you can learn from it. Some shapes hold more power-drawing properties for svcking power from others, while other shapes are force shapes, pushing power out) ... how you craft the head of your staff (no jokes here, please) determines its power, effectiveness, style, and usefulness to one or another of the schools of magic. Some shapes lend themselves to Illusion magic, while others lends themselves to Destruction magic .... the colors determine what kind of spell within that school is most effected. So you can, with a lot of practice and study, actually build your own staff-head with the power to lend itself toward affecting YOUR magic from that field and realm. It should be fairly expensive to acquire and build this staff head, so that it can't be done every day, unless you just want to sell them. Make it your job within the game. This could be fun and useful, as long as the shape-anolysis engine was powerful enough to recognize a lot of variety and programmed deeply enough to offer the variety that our creativity could be rewarded properly. If so, it would be quite interesting, I think.

4. Some Kind of Nordic-Style Dice Game.... just simple, like throwing bones, but is played just like Yahtzee. You try to create 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind, straights, flushes, etc... you actually throw the dice. You can try to cheat if you like but have to use some form of Diplomacy or Roleplaying or Thieves Skill toward "fooling the crowd" ... so it has to be fairly high. You can bet money on the next game, even if it's your own game .... so if you cheat, you could actually make money on that knowing that you could skew the results. The game should have a Nordic feel and style, and be historical, played on certain days more than others, and home some lore attached to it. Playing the game well could be a way to show your leadership skills in some parts of Skyrim, so devoted to it are those areas. When you are playing this game, it's always in a crowd, so there are at least 5-10 people gathered around you, cheering, jeering, hollering, snickering, and various other game-style taunts and kudos coming at you from every angle. It should feel very exciting. It should also be possible to interrupt the game as a fight breaks out should someone get caught cheating, or if the loser is a real jerkwad who can't control himself and just wants to take the money you just won. You would use the teeth of different creatures you killed throughout the game to build your pool of playing pieces. This would mean as you kill creatures throughout the game, you could pull their teeth to use in the game. Your trophies are now used to not only play a game, but show what kinds of monsters you are capable of taking down, which can add to everyone's in-game opinion of you, changing whose side the crowd wants to be on, like YOURS. hahahaaha.... This kind of mini-game would add to the authentic era of Nordic life, since I'm sure such games were not only possible then, but probably indeed played something like this.

Ahh, I think that these kinds of things would make really fun minigames, in my humble opinion!

And if I have a spell for undoing very hard locks (which I did) I want EVERY door and box to be openable. It was really annoying that certain barred doors and jewel boxes were not so. Irrelevant ultimately, what with my skeleton key et al. Still, annoying,.

am i the only one who absolutly loved the speechcraft minigame with getting people to like you

Mini games are fine for things like gambling or chopping wood, etc. because they are not activities related to character skills.

The thing is, instead of just saying "you can't openm it, it's a level 75 lock" when you don't have the level, maybe it should let you try, but force you to fail (or have incredible high chances of failure)?

'cause that way, it wouldn't ruin immersion, and it wouldn't ruin the RP side either.

Because so far, it's really been on or the other: you can try it, or you can't. and I hate it. I want to be able to try and fail, and I want to sometimes get really lucky too.

Yes that works. But the chance of failure would have to be incredibly high (99.9% for level 100 lock at base-lockpicking-level) and unrelated to player skill (if lockpicking is still a character skill, or part of one).